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And what's wrong with the tried and tested methods?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecstatic Events
" If you've had a fantastic time tonight, I've been Peter from Excalibur".
" If you've had a crap night, I've been ( Insert name of MDD member to insult here )". :D :D :D :D
before I tell you the story I need to explain the layout large pub with 2 function room I was doing a 60th birthday in the bigger one up stairs no fun carrying ,speakers up and down the fire escape in the freezing cold, but hay never mind. Down stairs there was a wedding with 50 quid Sid Playing.
So I get there nice and early to set-up no problems there the guests start arriving about 7 ish for a 7:30 start because of the bad weather no where near as many guest turn up as expected but no problem every one who was there was having a good time about 8:30 I was asked to turn up the music because people wanted to start dancing no problem there up it went. by 9 things were really swinging pack dance floor loads of requests everyone having a really good time.
when I notice something out of place there was a woman wearing a wedding dress I point this out to my roady who said na must just be a fancy evening dress then some more people come in waring morning suites and start joining in. So I said to the birthdays boys son who are the extra people and why are they wearing formal ware no idea he said so he went to ask them.
To both his and my surprise they were guests from downstairs apparently when I turned my show up I was over shouting 50 quid Sid and they though that the music I was playing was better than what they had downstairs
because of the lack of guests the birthday boy didn't mind a few gate crashers anyway so he let them join us
by last orders at 11:55 the room was packed nearly all the wedding party, including the bride and groom had abandon their own party down stairs and came up to join us. Both party's had a really great time .
at the end of the night the wedding party had a collection and split it 50/50 between me and the birthday boy ... fantastic
so how is this good gig bad gig?..
well put it this way it was a very good gig for me and a very bad gig for 50 quid Sid as I understand it there was even some doubt as to weather or not he was even going to get paid his £65 asking price.
Not look don't get me wrong I do have some sympathy with 50 quid Sid but at the same time I am glad to finally see one of the cheep inexperienced DJ's who are flooding the market come a cropper and frankly using 2 Red Sound lab speakers and some old warn out lighting that looks like something from the 1970's just ain't gonna cut it when there is a professional disco in the same building ;-)
I had a similar experience to this a couple of years ago, doing a birthday party in the smaller of a hotels two function rooms. They had booked me until midnight, so I played to midnight. I was loading into the car, and had to walk past the windows of the larger function room that had a wedding on until 0100...with most of the guests from the birthday part in there having gatecrashed!Quote:
Originally Posted by goldensounds83
Anyway, on to tonight. It's not very often you'll get superlatives from me with regard to disco work; after all these years it's just a job - nothing more, nothing less. However, tonight was the most amazing gig I've done in years.
It was a Xmas party, and there were probably 15 more guests than the room could comfortably hold. I was pretty disappointed after I set up early evening; I'd got such a small space to set up in, the legs of the speaker stands had to go under my deckstand, which meant the star cloth looked atrocious. Furthermore, because I had to have the speakers so close up under the crossbar, my normal lighting rig wouldn't fit, so had to go home and improvise with an LED Tango. There were two tables on the dancefloor, which meant that these guests would need to be moved after dinner, so needless to say, I wasn't exactly thrilled.
Dinner dragged a bit, so I didn't get started until around 2200, and given occurences earlier in the day, I wasn't exactly looking forward to it...but every single song was a hit...one of those nights when everything just flows, brilliantly. Every request I had worked really well, and the crowd were really, really up for it. Pretty much a full dance floor all night. Massive round of applause at the end, and most uncharacteristically.....I gave them one more!
Songs of the night: Fairytale of NY, Yolanda Be Cool, and......Copacabana (see posts passim - worked an absolute treat).
Very difficult job last night...not sure if it would be termed bad or good though, guess it was a bit of both.
It was a public Christmas party, about 150 folk in a room that holds 180 for a sit down so not too bad a turn out. I had about 60 Americans that were a coach party, about 60 from a local equestrian society and then about 30 from a local primary school.
The Americans got up and walked out as soon as the meal was done, I found out afterwards that they had an early breakfast at 6.15am as their coach was leaving for Scotland at 7.15am. The folk from the equestrian society started to drift off very soon after the meal but to be honest from the outset I didn't think they were the type that would have stayed long and by about 11pm I was left with just the primary school teachers. These teachers were all female and aged from about 25 upwards to about 50 and they were really up for a party. they had all drawn a forfit for the evening, things like putting veg onto someone's plate without them noticing, dressing up as a Mummy and kissing the DJ. Thing was they had messed up over the finishing time so at midnight their taxis turned up and they mostly all went leaving me with only 3. The 3 girls that were left were all a bit happy on the wine and no way were they going before the end at 1am so I had an hour of getting dragged onto the dance floor and having them dancing suggestively in front of me...very nice really but very hard work to keep it going for an hour for just 3 people.
I did a Christmas party up the local club last night , the forum was a children's party , complete with a few games and Santa , from 7:00pm until 9:00pm , followed by an normal disco for the members , sounds good.........................er not really.
from 7 till 9 I had 4 children , Santa was drunk , so did not do anything :Censored: , played a few games , and that was it.
from 9:00 pm there was 3 people :( I was due to play until midnight , about 10:00 pm the bar man said , pack up at 11:00 , at 10:30 , he said pack up now , so I did , by that time I was playing to my self , talk about boring , still there always next weekend.
Daryll
Mine last night was half decent. Busy dancefloor straight after the meal and up until the finish at midnight.
There was another Disco in one of the other rooms and I took the opportunity to go and have a look with the idea of maybe doing some networking if I liked what I saw......I didn't. I'm not going into why etc etc.
I concentrated on my lot which were up for it. It's been a knackering but good week for parties and next week is mega busy, probably even more knackering but if they are all like what I have had so far, I'll be more than happy.
Did a Wedding last night for a couple who had hired the whole of a country pub out for the day.
Did the groom's 30th about 18 months ago and they contacted me again recently to book me for their wedding which I thought was nice.
Had a great night with lots of compliments and even a surreal moment when somebody started to do a bit of Russian cossack dancing - announced on mic that had just the song for a longer display of this and put on Boney M's hoary classic - Rasputin - big risks of falling flat with this but it worked really well judging my the crowds reaction!
It was the 'just one more song' scenario at the end but did not mind as was such a great evening.
Certainly restored my faith in being a mobile jock which has come in for a bit of a battering lately with people wanting to pay less than I will go out for.
In his best Mrs Doyle voice: " Aw gowan. gowan, gowan,gowan,gowan". :D :D :D :D :D :DQuote:
Originally Posted by shakermaker
I had a wedding last night after setting up during the morning. As usual it was running late.
Started at 7.45 with 15 mins of children's magic as requested in advance and asked the brides father to assist in a trick as arranged previously.
First dance 8.00 they had asked but the couple disappeared until 8.20 so that was kate as well.
Buffet 9.15, Hog Roast and I played background tracks before the floor filled until 11.20 when a very large group left, in a coach I think.
Rather quiet until midnight as most that were left were in the bar area next door.
Good night and changed my gear around in the van this morning before making up 30 party bags for a 5 yr old party 12-2 and then home to get some extra, have a bite to eat and off to a handicapped party 4.30 - 8.30.
Ha!Ha! Where do I start!!??Quote:
Originally Posted by Excalibur
I have the contract at the venue. I didn't know that there was another Disco in the other room. I had Mike (Ecstatic Events) doing a wedding for me elsewhere so I had no other availability so either this was a late booking or the manager decided to get someone else in due to the fact that the party I was doing was for a company that had caused grief on a previous occasion (see my 'apprehensive' thread) and he wanted the other companies seperated from them....a good idea really.
As I said, I had time to kill so I thought I'd have a butchers. Spoke to the guys who looked like the chuckle brothers (yes, really!).... Both part-timers, both been DJing around 10 years so they told me. I didn't hear what they were like as I left them before they got started so they could well have been superstars so I can only go on first impressions etc but it looked very amateur.
I was told that throughout the year the guys have had 5 weekends where they have had nothing on. They go out for around £200.00. The look of the rig was very messy. There was a Numark CDmix for backup and they were using PCDJ on automix for the background stuff, joking about and putting effects over the top. There was a weird kind of happy hardcore vs alvin and the chipmunks style of christmas music going on which was embarassing. Cables wrapped around the goalposts, extension leads and cables hanging down from the overheads, speaker wires allover the shop etc etc...
They had a rusty ultimax stand that wasn't secure as one of them came over to shake my hand when I introduced myself and he knocked the rig and it moved like it was going to collapse. There was also a banner as their frontage. All in all it looked terrible in my opinion. I'm just being honest. The parties were obviously seperate but I could see throughout the night, guests from the other party looking in on mine and dancing outside the doors.
If you compared their rig and mine, well...there was a huge difference in appearence and quality. That sounds big headed but it's not. I have been in other places with other DJ's before and I can usually find something positive to say but on this occasion.....NOPE! They both had a look at my rig apparently when they were setting up in the afternoon and were asking me lots of questions during the background music section.